Star Spangled Desserts

America's best sweets  cheesecake, malts, ice
pops, and more  get all dressed up in red, white, and blue

"I just love discovering old American flavors that are
stuck away in a grandma's recipe file," says Wayne Harley
Brachman, author of the recently published American Desserts. He
has made it his mission to seek out "great hidden
flavors" in America's pastry traditions and reinterpret
classic desserts, some of them nearly forgotten  or, at
the very least, taken for granted. From treats with soda-fountain
flavors like malted milk powder to desserts as simple and sublime
as fruit crisp, these are national treasures that, Brachman says,
"deserve as much reverence" as more glamorous sweets.
"We're so close to them that we don't realize how spectacular
they are."